Live to Fight
by Rachelea
Summary: Jim loses patience. And about time. Slightly Dark!Jim AU


"What do you plead? Speak!"

As Usurna's demand swept the cavern, its echoes sent bits of gravel juddering across the floor. Jim rubbed his temple and sighed. How long had it been since those deep, resounding troll voices had grated their way into his nightmares?

He knew. Six months and twenty-nine days.

He knew because he'd had plenty of time to count them during the long, apocalyptic vision Merlin had sent. Every day he'd walked the knife's edge of the same question. Was the privilege of taking part in troll life worth the loss of freedom?

It was a bit like dual citizenship. Except, he supposed, the kind where you wake up one morning to find you've been drafted into war by an army, and not the one you're expecting. Trollmarket required everything of him, and forgave very little in return. Like Mom's stories of upset and overwhelmed patients who had worn her to tears. _"Why can't you just fix it, Dr. Lake? How dare you lack omnipotence?" "Why can't you hold back every danger, Trollhunter? Where were you when the goblins attacked my husband last night?"_ The message was the same for healers, warriors, moms and Jim: Fix it.

Mom had never screwed up as badly as Jim had, though. Or had she? Hadn't she ever had a bad night, a long double shift, and let a knife or a needle slip the wrong way? Misprescribed a drug, missed a deadly pathogen? Would she have put the world at risk for the sake of one human child?

 _Do no harm._

But Merlin had said to fight.

Jim's head pounded throughout the start of Toby's speech. Why had he chosen this, again? Why couldn't he leave that amulet alone.

"But consider this..."

Was this the kind of pointless nobility Merlin demanded of him? Better to walk into battle against Gunmar with an oversized sword than subject himself to this hypocritical proceeding.

 _Fight..._

"And that is why, Your Honor, we plead..."

"Nothing."

All eyes turned upward in shock. Jim's voice, smooth and cold as Daylight's blade, had cut through the room.

Usurna flinched back in surprise. "I beg your pardon?" Vendel's claws were curling again the stone ledge. How clear every detail of the room had suddenly become.

"I plead nothing," Jim repeated. "I do not recognize the authority of this tribunal to try me."

In a human courtroom, a wave of murmurs would have swept the room the room. In a troll one, there was an uproar. Jim closed his eyes against Gatto's rumble of outrage. All night, nausea from the swaying cage had been building up inside him.

"Order!" Usurna was hollering, pounding a heavy blue-seamed arm against the pulpit. "Trollhunter, explain yourself." She seemed to have forgotten her own strict injunction of ten minutes' prior, that the defendant not speak for himself.

Jim exhaled.

"I am human. You are trollkind. You talk constantly of troll law, but it has no jurisdiction over me."

"You swore an oath to trollkind!"

"I swore that I would attempt to defend them. I never claimed abilities that I do not have. You all knew that I am a human child. _That_ failing didn't prevent half the trolls in this market from demanding I solve everything from gnome infestations to marriage difficulties!" What a day _that_ had been. "I never pretended to be one of you."

Usurna had recovered. "Nevertheless, Trollhunter..."

 _"No!"_ Jim's shout shocked even himself. "There is no 'nevertheless'.You have no jurisdiction over non-trollkind residing outside your territories. If you attempt it, you give up all claims to either law or justice."

Even loyal Vendel was taken aback.

"You have been among us for months!"

"I have _worked_ among you, Vendel. What do you know about my true life? My mom's job? My home?"

Vendel was silent.

"Blinky, Arr, and Draal know these things," Jim said to himself. "The rest of you just use me."

Blinky was gazing up at him, stricken.

"Jim," he began, but Arr cut across him.

"Not...meant to be that way."

"No," Jim agreed. "But it is." He raised his voice. "You have mistaken charity work for subservience, Usurna. Would you like to find how wrong you are?"

The queen's feathered dress flared, and though Jim had meant nothing by the threat, he felt a jolt.

 _Fight,_ Merlin chanted in his ear, but Jim fought it down. There were always better ways.

"I call upon this council to release me," he said, attempting eye contact with each member. "If Gunmar escaped through my actions--as he would soon have done through his agents--then it is only right that I hunt him down. As is _my_ right as the trollhunter. If this council releases me, I will continue to grant Trollmarket my aid. If it does not, I will do what is most harmful to you: nothing."

A gasp arose, and Jim realized he was playing with fire. The pride of trolls was no more quenchable than Gatto's innards. But what choice had they left him?

"We will... withdraw and consider your ultimatum, Trollhunter," said Usurna at last.

Jim bowed his head.

The verdict was death, and Merlin was right. It was the one thing he had to fight. If Jim was killed, what unfortunate troll or human would the amulet next pull into the cycle of manipulation? Something inside Jim whispered that it would be Claire. It was a voice logic couldn't silence. She was the best fighter by far, save perhaps Draal, and knew her way around all three worlds.

He could not, _would_ not let them mistreat Claire that way.

Usurna was smiling at him, misinterpreting his fear. When he looked again, the smile was gone. Jim's friends howled and cringed as his cage creaked its way to the rear of the cavern, where the pit gaped.

 _"Jim!"_ "No! You can't do this!"

"Master Jim!"

Arr's anguished growl drowned them all out. But Jim had locked eyes with Usurna again, and the word he saw printed there wasn't _death._ _Fight._ It filled his ears again, rising to a roar of static. Daylight was gleaming in his hand and off his breastplate. And trolls... trolls didn't know how to build a cage to hold a human who no longer cared to be held.

"You chose me," Jim said said softly. The cage grated backwards.

"You used me." He was outside of it now, clinging one-handed so casually that Coach would have wept.

"You've betrayed me." His battle reflexes were so well-tuned with Arr's that the latter could read the twist of Jim's body as he fell, had sent him rocketing upward before he'd had time even to think it through. And long before anyone had expected, Jim was standing before Usurna, flame shuddering violently in his hand.

"And after all that, you didn't anticipate my third option?"

The blade slid out of Usurna's forehead before her counterparts' horrified eyes. Jim smiled at Vendel and ducked his swinging staff as the queen's corpse crumbled to dust.

"I have a side to choose, Vendel. Don't make it too easy."

The scar on his neck tingled.


End file.
